Kumogakure's Naruto, Sasuke, and Neji
by SpectreShepard
Summary: In canon, Kumogakure attempted to kidnap Hinata Hyuga. In this story, not only did they choose a branch boy instead, but they had other targets as well. Kumogakure kidnapped Neji Hyuga, Sasuke Uchiha, and Naruto Uzumaki on that fateful night. This is their story.
1. Prologue

Prologue

Konohagakure – Three Hours After the Kyubi Attack

Hiruzen Sarutobi stood behind the old mahogany desk that had been created by the Shodaime Hokage, the same desk that each Hokage after the Shodaime had come to use for their needs. It was rather large, about eight feet in length and about four feet in width. Standing in the shadows that the dark office created, he contemplated the life of the desk in front of him.

It had been rumored that it was the playground for a young Tsunade Senju while the Shodaime Hokage was working on cementing the truces between the Senju clan and all the other clans that came to make up the first hidden village.

It had been rumored to hold the secret texts of the Edo Tensei or the reanimation jutsu while the Nidaime Hokage was working on it during his tenure as hokage of the village hidden among the leaves. It also held his special texts on mastering and utilizing space-time ninjutsu.

It was known to hold several scrolls and tomes on history and tactics while the Sandaime Hokage had ruled. It was also known to be where the old man known as the professor hid his stash of tobacco when he didn't want his wife finding it and confiscating it claiming that he was setting a bad example for his children and for the village.

When the Yondaime Hokage came around, it was rumored to not only hold several scrolls on Uzumaki and Namikaze clan sills. It was also rumored to hold the personal journal of the Yondaime Hokage. Inside said journal, was rumored to exist the secrets behind the Flying Thunder God Technique. If all of these rumors were supposed to be believed, then one could also believe the rumor that Kushina Uzumaki hid several days' worth of instant ramen.

After thinking about all of the things that this desk had held within its drawers and all of experiences that others had experienced around it, Hiruzen looked at the bundle of cloth that was the only thing upon the desk at the moment. Inside the bundle rested the sleeping form of the son of the late Yondaime Hokage and the late Kushina Uzumaki.

Thinking about all of the things that had taken place around this desk, he thought on what he was going to do with the now orphaned boy. His father and mother had just died only three hours ago by sealing the Kyubi into their newborn son all for the sake of the village. They had made the ultimate sacrifice to protect all of them, and the old man couldn't help but feel ashamed of the village that he called his home.

It hadn't taken nearly an hour before the clan elders had already found out about the boy's fate and they were already trying to have their way with the kid. Some of them were so scared of the fox, that they believed that the only sensible thing to do would be to kill the young blond child. This sentiment was shared among several of the lower clans and many of the merchants.

Others were experiencing so much pain at the loss their clans had experienced from the attack that the Kyubi had launched at their village and were seeing red. They wanted revenge, and for some reason that was eluding the old man, they seemed to believe that the boy was the demon he now held at bay. The main problem clan was the Uchiha. They had lost so many of their warriors tonight that Fugaku Uchiha was crying for the child's blood.

The next problem was Danzo and his thrice damned ROOT. He had thought that Minato had been able to finally get rid of them, but it seemed that they were still around in in force. It had taken only thirty minutes after they had returned for Danzo somehow find out about the boy. Within another thirty he had come forward and claimed that he wanted to train the boy as a village weapon. The old man was convinced that it was Danzo who had let slip the information to the clan heads.

However, the old man had decided that he wasn't going to let Danzo or any of the clans get there way. He was going to make sure that the boy did not suffer because of the huge responsibility that his parents had placed upon him. He had already decided that he was going to decree the sealing of the Kyubi as an S Class Secret. A secret that if broken is punishable by death.

The only problem left was what the boy's future would hold for him. The boy's only family in Konohagakure was now dead. He knew that like most of the other clans, they had suffered too much loss to be able to take the boy in and provide for him.

What was even worse was that they couldn't give the boy his inheritance and allow him to claim his father's name. He had already figured that if they did allow that, it wouldn't be a month before the assassination attempts on the boy's life would start. After all, his father had made many enemies in different countries, and he was sure that they would love the chance to take their revenge out upon the boy.

He had even considered having Jiraiya come back and take care of his godchild, but he realized that even if the man would, that his skills as a spymaster were too important and that the life for the child upon the road would be just as dangerous as announcing his heritage.

There was nothing else that he or anyone could do for the boy. Walking forward to the boy and looking at the child that was tucked within the depths of the blankets, the old man broke down into tears. He was so ashamed that he had to do this to the Yondaime's boy, but he had no other choice. He was going to have to place him in the orphanage. He would have to remain an orphan.

Kumogakure – Nearly Three Months After The Kyubi Attack At Konohagakure

A was currently sitting behind his large stone desk as he listened to his Chief Intelligence Gatherer give his report to him. They had been hearing inklings of the attack on Konohagakure by the Kyubi for three months now, and they had finally been able to get a full picture.

Their spy had reported back to them telling them about how the fox had attacked in the night, destroying several compounds, and killing hundreds of villagers and shinobi. He then told them about how the Yondaime Hokage had appeared upon a large toad summon and had utilized his space-time ninjutsu to take the fox to another location away from the village.

After that the spy went on to tell them what the Sandaime Hokage had released to the general public about the Kyubi's and the Yondaime Hokage's demise. It seemed that somehow during their battle, the Yondaime Hokage had been able to kill the fox; however it came at the price of his own life.

"So Bee, do you believe what Konohagakure has released about the demise of the Kyubi? Can the fox be killed, because I was pretty positive that a tailed beast couldn't be killed." The Raikage said in his deep, yet neutral voice that belied the actual feelings that he was experiencing, said question being directed to a large dark skinned man that was standing at ease in front of his desk.

The council had ordered that the Kumogakure shinobi 'aquire' foreign clan techniques and kekkai genkai, and that he was to acquire them by any means necessary. If only he could just ask foreign clans nicely and they would just give them up. He never really enjoyed these parts of his job as Raikage, but he knew that it was necessary.

So when he found out that Konohagakure had been attacked and that supposedly they had vanquished the Kyubi, he couldn't help but hope that they weren't being truthful. If he could get his hands on another Jinchuriki for their village, then he might just be able to get the council off of his back about 'acquiring' those clan techniques and kekkai genkai.

"Yo, ain't no way to kill Mr. Nine. So that old man must be lyin. Whee." Bee said while waving his arms in front of his body and then punching the air, his actions leading the Raikage and the Chief Intelligence Gatherer to sweat drop at his antics.

"Kagemusha, I want you to gather all of the intel that your team can gather on the damage that Konohagakure sustained from the attack. I want you to then give me an estimate to how long you believe that it would take for them to completely recover said attack. Also, I would like for you to compile a list of all of the clans that reside within Konoha and their respective known Kekkai Genkai." The Raikage said to the Chief Intelligence Gatherer before dismissing him and Bee.

Konohagakure – Around Three Years After Kyubi Attack

A was sitting down in a chair while Bee and Kagemusha stood behind him. He was sitting in front of the desk that of the Hokage and the Sandaime Hokage was sitting behind it with a happy smile on his face and a pipe full of tobacco sticking out of it. They had just finished cementing together a treaty that would bring peace to their two villages.

"If he only knew what we are going to be doing tonight before we head out for Kumogakure, he wouldn't be smiling like that." A thought to himself without showing anything on his face as he signed the treaty that the old man had pushed across the desk to him.

After the formalities were observed, they all went and partook of a large feast that was organized for this very occasion. It was a big thing, a peace treaty between their two villages. There hadn't ever been any true treaty between them before, only a grudging respect and reluctance to fight each other's large militaries.

That didn't stop them from having their many skirmishes. That also wasn't going to stop what they were going to do tonight. Tonight would definitely be marked down in history, but not for the treaty that was being signed. Tonight was the night that Kumo was not only going to still two Konohagakure Kekkai Genkai, but they were also going to still it's Jinchuriki.

Hyuga Compound – Around Five Hours Later

A team of three Kumogakure jonin was quietly making their way through the deserted streets of the Hyuga Compound. It was nearly one in the morning and it seemed that everybody was asleep, believing that they were completely safe behind their large walls.

Well they were going to learn in the morning just how wrong they were in that sentiment. The squad of jonin located the house among the compound that their spymaster had told them housed the boy that they were here to kidnap. The boy's name was Neji Hyuga.

Silently opening the door and walking into the house, the squad walked across the wooden floor and found themselves at a hallway that had several thin sections of shoji that blocked entrance to the rooms beyond. Walking to the second room on the right side of the hallway, the room that they were told the boy would be in; they silently opened the shoji and walked inside the room.

In a bed in the center of the room laid a small boy that looked to be around the age of four. On his forehead they could see the faint symbol of the caged bird seal that the Hyuga clan placed upon all of the branch family members.

Grimacing at the sign of the customs that this particular clan followed, the Kumogakure jonin walked towards the boy and one knelt down and lean over the boy. The jonin pulled a senbon out of a pouch, said senbon having been coated in a sleeping serum earlier that day.

Pricking the boy's in the neck with the senbon, they waited as he rolled over once in his bead before falling back into a deep sleep. The jonin that had injected him with the serum picked him up in his arms and they all three turned to leave. As quickly as they could while remaining silent, the three jonin left the house and the compound behind and made their way out of the village to the rendezvous point that had been set up about a mile outside the village walls.

Uchiha Compound

Another squad of three jonin were sneaking inside the Uchiha Compound at the same time that the other squad was sneaking inside the Hyuga Compound. The only difference between the two was that the Uchiha actually had guards stationed at several places within their compound.

It didn't do them any good in the end, since they were all of chunin rank and they were silently killed by the squad of jonin. After killing the last Uchiha within their way, the squad made their way silently to the Uchiha Clan Head's house.

After a few more minutes of walking, the three jonin found themselves at a grand house that was three stories tall. Silently slipping in through a window on the second floor, the three jonin quietly opened a door and walked down the hallway.

Opening the third door on the left of the hallway, they found themselves staring at a small boy that looked to be three years old. He was lying in his bed and the moon was streaming in his window, casting shadows all around the room as clouds moved continually moved in front of and away from the moon.

Again the same thing happened as at the Hyuga Compound with one of the Jonin injecting a sleeping serum into the young Uchiha before picking him up and proceeding to leave via the window that they had entered the house through.

They had to kill two more Uchiha before they could leave the compound, but they had finished their part of the mission flawlessly. The squad silently made their way out of the village and headed to the rendezvous to meet up with the other squads.

Apartment Building

Bee stood above a small blond boy with three whisker marks on each cheek. He was already replacing the senbon into the pouch and he had already placed the five pronged seal upon the boy to make sure that the Kyubi's chakra didn't neutralize the serum.

He bent down and picked the boy up and walked back to the entrance of the apartment. He hopped over to the other building that he had been at nearly five minutes ago and looked to make sure that the three ANBU bodies were properly hidden from obvious view.

Satisfied that they were, Bee placed the boy on his back and started hopping across the buildings heading towards the village walls. He was heading towards one of the minor gates to leave via and meet up with the other squads that had been sent to kidnap the other two boys.

He hoped that their parts of the assignment had gone off without a hitch like his. They wanted to be half way back to Kumogakure by the time that it was discovered what they had done. This might very well start the fourth great ninja war.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Konohagakure – Uchiha Compound The Next Morning

The entire Kumogakure convoy was already a fourth of the way home by the time stuff started hitting the fan back in Konohagakure. The first thing that was noticed was the dead Uchiha guards. When the guards failed to check in after their shifts were over, the higher ups decided to send out a party to try and find the chunins.

What they found were several bloody messes. The Uchiha guards had obviously been snuck up to and were killed before they even knew they were being attacked. Most had their throats slit, while a few of the guards had kunai embedded in their skulls.

It took nearly two hours for the party to find each of the dead Uchiha guards and once they had finished the total tally was nearly eight dead chunin and five dead genin. The head of the guard was not looking forward to having to give his report to Fugaku. He was right in not wanting to have to give his report, since in his anger Fugaku had turned his office into a war zone with the only things not broken were the two Uchiha's bodies.

He was in such an uproar, that after he destroyed everything in his office, he decided to go outside and destroy some more stuff. He wasn't the clan head for nothing, and everybody remembered why as he made three hand signs ending with the tiger and blasted a large fireball at a stand of trees outside of his office.

Within seconds the trees were reduced to ashes and he finally found himself calm enough to think. However, no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't think of anybody that would infiltrate his compound only to kill some guards. Even if that had been the case, each guard still had their eyes, so he honestly couldn't see what this was all about.

Quickly forming several investigative squads that were comprised of a jonin and three chunin for each squad and had them go and investigate each crime scene. However, two hours later he learned that it was all in vane since it seemed that the attacker or attackers had been so skilled that they had left no trace of themselves other than the dead bodies.

Several hours later one of the investigative teams realized something that made them all start sweating bullets. They went to report what they had realized and they nearly shit their pants at the violent storm that occurred afterwards. Fugaku had went back home after he had destroyed his office and so he was at his house when the team reported to him.

Once they had reported to him that they realized that the attacks had led in a straight path to his house, the clan head ordered a full sweep of his house. He was thinking that possible they had hid a bomb or something in his house.

However what he found made him lose it. He had called everyone who lived at his house to the living area and when Sasuke didn't appear, he went looking for his son to give him a piece of his mind. When he got to his son's room, he opened the door and saw an unmade bed and that was it.

Thinking that the boy had gone to train or something, he went to the spot that he knew he frequented when training and was going to not only give him a talking to about not appearing when he was summoned, but about not making his bead. The boy was an Uchiha, and Uchiha had to be perfect at everything in life and he was going to beat it into the boy's head if he had to.

However, his son wasn't at the spot he normally went to train at, and starting to get a little worried, he went back home to hear the results of the sweep of his house. What he heard when he got home didn't settle his uneasiness in the least for there wasn't anything hidden anywhere in his house that they could detect.

Somehow being able to be level headed at that moment, he decided to wait until dinner before he started jumping to conclusions, because at that moment he was starting to fear that someone had kidnapped his youngest child. However, dinner came and went and still his son didn't appear.

The next day when his son was still nowhere to be found in the clan compounds, Fugaku went to the Hokage to enlist the help of the ANBU to search for his son. When the ANBU reported having found no sign of the boy anywhere in the village or around it, Fugaku could no longer delude himself. His youngest son had been kidnapped and whoever did it was good, because there wasn't a single trail to follow.

Hyuga Compound

Since there weren't any bodies to be found on the Hyuga compound, they didn't figure out what had happened until the day after the day after the Uchiha's had found their guards. Hizashi had noticed the Neji wasn't anywhere to be found, but that was normal for the young boy. He had just been branded and he had taken to wandering the forests alone, wrapped up inside his thoughts.

So it wasn't any surprise when he hadn't returned for dinner, no matter the fact that Hizashi had thought he had made it well and clear that the boy needed to be home by then. He only started to get worried when he discovered the next morning that the boy had never come home in the night. After looking around the compound for his son, he had decided to go and talk to his brother.

Hiashi had already heard rumors about the Uchiha murders and the disappearance of Sasuke, so when he was told that Neji was missing, things started clicking in his sharp mind. He immediately went to the Hokage to enlist the help of the ANBU as well and he ended up getting the same answer that Fugaku got after they had searched for him.

Hokage Tower

The Sandaime Hokage was currently sitting behind that old Hokage desk as he rubbed his temples, attempting to assuage the headache that he was currently experiencing. Fugaku Uchiha and Hiashi Hyuga were standing at attention in front of his desk.

The Hokage lowered his hands and pulled some tobacco out of his desk. Deciding that he might as well relieve some stress, because there seemed to be an abundant amount of it today, he tapped some into his pipe and lit it with a small fire release jutsu.

It had been a day since they had come to the conclusion that someone had kidnapped not only an Uchiha boy, but also a Hyuga boy as well. Next came an even bigger headache. When ANBU had been searching the village for the two boys, they had come across the dead ANBU outside Naruto's apartment.

The ANBU that discovered the bodies knew what their fellow ANBU had been tasked with and so had decided to go and investigate the boy's apartment. Not finding him there, they left immediately to report to the Hokage this latest bit of information.

It hadn't taken too much for the old Hokage to figure out who was behind the kidnappings. The only people who had the man power to launch such an undertaking and get in and out of the village undetected were the people who had already been inside the village.

Which meant that it was either someone in his own Shinobi force, but since they hadn't found hide nor hair of the three boys, it had to be someone from outside. Since there was only one outside force within Konoha yesterday, it was pretty easy to figure out that Kumogakure had to be the ones who had launched such a daring move.

The worst thing was that they had done everything under the guise of signing a peace treaty with Konohagakure. The reason that was the worst thing was because of the amount of time that Hiruzen Sarutobi had worked for that peace treaty. He didn't want to give up everything he had worked so hard for.

The problem with that was the fact that if they didn't do something, not only was Konohagakure going to be the laughing stock of many villages that saw peace as weakness, but he was running the chance of inciting a civil war.

He knew just how easily the Uchiha could anger, and he figured that having not only one of their one kidnapped by a foreign village, but the clan head's own youngest son at that, would incite their anger to rise to the highest that it had probably ever risen.

He didn't know what to think about the Hyuga Clan. They were par with the Uchiha when it came to clan pride, but they were also harder to actually lose control to their emotions. He was hoping that he could trust Hiashi to see the importance of avoiding a conflict and thus end up avoiding a war. However, if the Hyuga and the Uchiha Clans wanted war, than there wasn't going to be anything he could do about it, and he knew it.

So when he started explaining his decision to the two clan heads, he wasn't surprised in the least at their reactions. Fugaku completely blew his fuse, which Hiruzen had anticpated. Hiashi had kept his cool and had kept his emotions out of his decision making, even if he was angrier than hell that someone had kidnapped his nephew.

So all things considered, things had turned out as well as he could have hoped. By no means was his headache gone by the end of the day, but it wasn't as bad as it was earlier. Fugaku had demanded that they launch themselves at Kumogakure for their actions, and Hiruzen had flat out said no.

At that point, Fugaku had started to question the Hokage's authority on the matter and decided that he would convene an emergency meeting with the council to have them decide what they should do. When the meeting occurred and Fugaku had proposed his demand, a majority of the merchants and civilians and a few ninja clan heads had sided with him.

However, the majority of the council was made up of ninja clan heads and they had been able to keep a clear head and make their decision with logic. They had all seen what war did to villages, and not wanting to start another one no matter who would eventually be blamed, they had sided with the Hokage against a war.

At this point Fugaku had stood up and had stormed out of the meeting before Hiruzen could dismiss it. It came as no surprise to anyone when all of the merchants and civilians followed his lead by storming out in anger. All of the others just went home to deal with their individual clans.

Uchiha Compound – Next Day

Within the confines of the Uchiha Council Chambers, the clan elders were discussing what they should do. They knew themselves that no matter how strong their Kekkai Genkai was, going up against an entire village by themselves would be suicide and they knew from past attempts that infiltrating Kumogakure was impossible.

However, that wasn't going to stop them in their tracks, it was only going to slow them down. Fugaku decided to tell them the idea that he had been thinking about since the previous night. He told them how he wanted to garner support of some of the other stronger clans, and then launch a coup d'état for the position of Hokage.

It had come across with varying degrees of shock, before they all decided that it was the only thing that they could do. They couldn't stand by and allow their own clan members to kidnapped and retaliate, and that was exactly what the village was forcing them to do.

They agreed that they would hold themselves from launching their bid for power until they had the support of a majority of the clans. It wouldn't do to make their bid for power and send their village into a civil war. They wanted to make the coup d'état as bloodless as possible, because they would need the village at its strongest if they were going to declare war on Kumogakure.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Land of Hot Water – Two Days After Kidnapping

When the three boys had finally regained consciousness, they had all freaked. The three of them had tried to make a run for it when they realized that they were completely surrounded by strangers and that they weren't where they had each respectively gone to sleep the night before. However, the only ninja that had come on this mission were jonin and up so they didn't have trouble catching the kids before they got away.

Once they had been caught and they got over the fact that they were completely surrounded by strangers, their curiosity got the better of them, and they all three started asking questions about where they were and what they were doing. They were so young, impressionable, and trusting that it didn't take long for the ninja to gain their trust.

At their questions, most of the ninja began to feel really low at what they were being forced by the council to do. It just felt so wrong to them to kidnap three little boys and then to feed them lies like they had to do. So finally after a few minutes of silence, Bee had taken it upon himself to introduce himself to the boys and to answer some of their questions.

"Hey gaki one, gaki two, and gaki three. Feast your eyes on the most awesome Hachibi Jinchuriki Killer Bee, Wheee." Bee rapped in greeting to the three kids.

Each of the three kids had the deer in the head lights look, which was probably from a combination of shock at their surroundings and company, and then the shock from Bee's behavior. Not a single one of them had ever met an adult who acted like him.

After telling them that they were on their way to a super cool village, and that they were going to be super cool guests of honor, Bee had finally gotten the kids to stop asking questions, but not before they asked how they had come to be with them. Bee had died inside when he had to tell them the lie that they had fabricated.

"You ask where we found you gaki one, gaki two and gaki three. Well you see, we found you three sleeping among the trees. So we decided that you could come live with me, Killer Bee, Wheee." Bee rapped in answer to their question.

It truly was a blessing that they had been able to get all three of them at such young ages. With any luck, hopefully they would forget about their past homes and they could get them to consider Kumogakure their home with a little bit of time.

The Raikage hoped that they wouldn't have to resort to some of the darker and highly frowned upon ways of making them see their way. A never did like the brainwashing techniques that they had, but as with the kidnapping, if the council asked for it, he would have to deliver.

Kumogakure – Village Gates – One Week After Kidnapping

The Raikage was walking forward at the front of the procession that was returning from Konohagakure and he couldn't help but feel disgusted. Past the gates were the citizens of Kumogakure having a celebration at their successful kidnapping of the three Konohagakure children. They had no clue just what the repercussions for what they had done could be.

He knew that it would be a huge boost for Kumogakure's Shinobi forces in the future, not to mention that they would in the future be able to have Uchiha, Hyuga, and Uzumaki clans within Kumogakure, but he didn't appreciate having to risk a full out war with one of the strongest hidden villages for it.

As the Raikage, A knew that he had to do what the village council asks of him, but he also had the common sense to know that what they had just done was to violently poke a sleeping giant in the side. The council was counting on the old Sandaime Hokage to try and keep the peace, but if it came down to it, he knew that the Hokage would have to listen to his council just as he had to listen to his.

If the Uchiha and Hyuga called for war, than there would be nothing that the Hokage could do to avoid it. If the two of the largest and most influential clans in Konohagakure decided to, they could make the Raikage's life a large headache for a long time.

He knew that there weren't many things that Konohagakure could do to his village, but it wasn't his village per say that he was worried about. It was a Kage's responsibility to protect his villagers and his ninja and a war would take a toll on his shinobi force and he honestly didn't want that.

Kumogakure – Raikage Tower – One Month After Kidnapping

Kagemusha stood at attention in front of the Raikage as he gave his report on the intelligence that he and his spies had been able to garner. He informed the Raikage about the council proceedings that had occurred in Konohagakure and the outcome of said proceedings. He then went on to express his opinion that the Uchiha Clan was going to be cooking something up.

"Kagemusha, I want you and your forces to remain vigilant and to report everything that you deem important about what the Uchiha Clan does. I want to know what they are planning long before they implement it. I really don't have to tell you just how much I would rather be able to avoid another war." The Raikage tasked his Head of Intelligence Gathering before dismissing him.

Konohagakure – Uchiha Compounds Nearly Five Months Later

Fugaku was again standing in front of the Uchiha Council as he gave a report as to his progress of gaining the support of the minor clans. He had the support of one fourth of the clans, gained through promises, threats, and the occasional genjutsu created by his sharingan.

They didn't really have many questions for him other than what he believed the timetable would be for their eventual coup d'état. He replied that he believed that they would be ready to strike within two to three years. They meeting continued with everyone trying to hash out some of the more detailed parts of the plan.

Hokage Tower – Next Day

"What do you mean you allowed them to take Naruto away? Why didn't you do something, don't you remember who his parents were, or have you already forgotten Minato and Kushina? Why Sarutobi Sensei, why did you allow them to just get away with this?" Jiraiya had furiously asked with tears streaming down his once he had been told why he had been so urgently summoned back to Konohagakure.

Not even giving Hiruzen Sarutobi a chance to answer, he launched into a tirade. "You know that this wouldn't have happened if you would have just allowed me to take the boy in. We would have been on the road and he would have been safe with anonymity. I could have protected him, like I promised Minato and Kushina that I would." Jiraiya said while furiously punching that old Hokage desk with every sentence that he spoke.

"Dammit Sarutobi Sensei, I said dammit all to hell and back. Why did this have to happen to him after everything that has already happened to him? He already lost his father and mother. He had the biggest burden that anyone could ever have placed upon his shoulders." Jiraiya said before deciding to leave Sarutobi Sensei before he could even try to answer any of his questions.

Kumogakure – One Year After The Kidnapping

"Bee, you know I hate green food. I want ramen." A blond boy pouted as he turned his best puppy dog eyes upon the man who took care of him, Sasuke, and Neji.

Bee looked down at the blond kid in front of him and had to force himself to look away from the kid's deep and watery blue eyes. Sasuke and Neji would develop dangerous eyes in the future, but the boy in front of him already had a dangerous pair of eyes himself. He would be breaking countless hearts when he got older, Bee just knew it.

Sasuke and Neji both rolled their eyes since they knew that any second now the older man was going to cave. The reason they knew that it was going to happen was because it always did. They didn't mind the other boy's antics though, because they both enjoyed the noodles that Naruto considered the food from the gods. Let's not forget that anything tastes better than vegetables, especially to little kids.

"Oh alright Mr. Nine. I guess ramen tonight will be fine." Bee rapped while he led the three boys to a ramen stand that they ended up at almost every night.

As the three of them walked to the ramen stand, Bee couldn't help but feel relieved yet again that the three boys had started to finally settle down and relax. It had taken the three boys almost the entire year before they stopped asking if Bee knew where their home and families were and if he could take them there.

He had died a little more inside each time that he told them that he didn't. He didn't know if they were already starting to forget about them, but he honestly hoped that they were. It would be a whole lot easier in the long run if they were.

The three boys all expressed their gratitude with loud thanks before they finally began digging into their ramen with gusto. Bee looked on at the three boys with mirth in his eyes and a deep resounding chuckle, happy at how things seemed to be turning out.

Konohagakure – Uchiha Council Chambers – Three Years After Kidnapping

Itachi listened with attentive ears to the council proceedings that were happening in front of him. He had been summoned to the chambers early this day and he had been waiting here almost half of the evening before they finally allowed him in. When they finally told him why they had summoned him, he honestly couldn't believe his ears, because he would never have thought that his clan would try to do something like this.

"Itachi, my son, you and I are to be the point of our blade. You and I are going to be the ones to dispatch the Hokage and his personal ANBU. In a year's time, you must have earned such a reputation in ANBU that you will be handpicked to be one of Hiruzen Sarutobi's personal guards. We cannot afford for any failures. Are plans are hinged upon you attaining that position. Do you understand?" Fugaku and the rest of the council ask the eleven year old prodigy that stood before them after they told him of their plan.

After assuring them that he would make no mistakes and that he would make sure that he was a member of the Hokage's personal guard by that time, he was dismissed. After Itachi left, the council members and Fugaku got back to hashing out their plan some more.

Konohagakure – Hokage Tower – One Month Later

"I see. I thank you for your service to this village and to myself." Hiruzen Sarutobi said in a low and neutral tone to the twelve year old boy that was kneeling behind him as he stared out at the Hokage Monument from behind his desk.

He had just promoted the Uchiha boy to the ranks of his personal guard, and he was thinking to himself that he was so glad that he had done so. The boy had proven his loyalty to the village and to him by telling him about his clans planned coup d'état. Dismissing the boy, he thought about how to go about this peacefully as he stared at the face of the Yondaime.

"Oh how I wish you were here. I am quite confident that you would have been able to pull this off Minato." Hiruzen mused aloud before turning away and sitting down at his desk to prepare for the headache that he was sure to hit him soon.

Kumogakure – Raikage Tower – One Month Later

"So, you believe that the Uchiha plan to attempt a coup d'état. Hmm, do you still have your contacts in the organization ROOT?" The Raikage asked with a thoughtful expression on his face.

The man that he asked was none other than Kagemusha, his Chief Intelligence Gatherer, whom was standing in front of the Raikage's desk after delivering his latest report on the actions of the Uchiha. After Kagemusha affirmed that he still had contacts in ROOT, the Raikage took a moment to think before giving his orders.

"I want you to have information of the plan to slip into ROOT's hands. I believe that the fool Hiruzen Sarutobi will attempt to go about things peacefully and if things don't go his way, I honestly believe that the Uchiha might actually be able to pull this off. If they are able to pull this off, it won't be long afterwards that Konohagakure openly declares war. Hopefully Danzo will do something that will stop this plan before it can get started." The Raikage said to Kagemusha before dismissing him.

Konohagakure – Hokage Tower – One Month Later

"Don't be a fool, Sarutobi. Peace with the Uchiha, humph, it is an impossible dream." Danzo said in a low tone to Hiruzen Sarutobi from the chair that he was sitting in in front of that Hokage desk.

"You know that there is no way to find a peaceful way to go about this. The Uchiha aren't going to listen to you." Danzo continued his speech while looking his old teammate in the eye with his one uncovered eye.

"That is the difference between you and I Danzo. You won't even take the chance to try and find a peaceful solution to things. I will not conclude that peace is a hopeless cause." Hiruzen said before telling his old teammate that he had work to do and that if there wasn't anything else that he wanted to talk about, he needed to get back to it.

Konohagakure – Root Headquarters – Two Months Later

"You are to wipe out every last one of your clansmen. Their blind need for vengeance is leading them to making a mistake that could spell the ruination of the Hidden Leaf Village. Unfortunately, your mission will be an S class secret, and to protect the village, you will have to become a nuke-nin. Do you understand you orders?" Danzo said to the now thirteen year old boy who stood before him.

After telling him that he did, he left to gather the supplies that he would need for the fight and the subsequent flight. He was a member of ROOT and he understood that it was up to ROOT's members to take the ugly missions that the village couldn't be seen taking. They had to make the alliances that the village couldn't make. They also had to do everything within their power to make sure that the Hidden Leaf Village was always protected, even if it meant killing one's clan to stop a bid for power.

It took Itachi only fifteen minutes to gather the supplies he would need and to make it back to the Uchiha Compound. First he had to locate one particular Uchiha. He had to find Shisui because he had learned that to activate his Mangekyo Sharingan that he would have to take the life of his best friend and he knew that he would need the second stage sharingan to be able to deal with his father.

He finally found Shisui kneeling down by a river with a hand over one of his eyes. Noticing immediately that something was wrong, he rushed to his best friend's side. Upon reaching Shisui's side, the Uchiha revealed to him his face and his missing eye. He told Itachi about how Danzo had attacked him and stole one of his eyes.

He then went on to tell Itachi that he knew what he had been sent to do and what he came here for. Telling Itachi that he understood why he needed to do it and that he agreed with his sentiment that they needed to protect the Hidden Leaf Village at all costs, Shisui placed a kunai in Itachi's hand after entrusting his last eye to Itachi.

Itachi began to cry as he stabbed his best friend in the heart and watched him die before his very eyes. Within seconds of Shisui's death, his Mangekyo Sharingan activated because of the pain and anger he was experiencing. Steeling his heart after the anger and sadness he felt at having to take his best friend's life, Itachi left to finish his mission.

That was when the blood bath began and it took only about an hour for him to finish it. He had slain each and every one of his clansmen utilizing his superior sharingan to make short work of most of the Uchiha by placing them in strong genjutsu before slitting their throats.

Finally after killing all of his other brethren, Itachi made his way to his home. His battle with his father lasted only a few seconds for he had trapped him in Tsukuyomi the moment he had laid eyes upon him. In the world of his genjutsu, he tortured his father for three days and three nights for forcing him to have to do this to protect the Hidden Leaf Village.

After he brought his father out of the world of Tsukuyomi, he looked down at the shriveled man that was crying on the floor at his feet and could help but feel disgusted. Activating his second ability granted to him by the Mangekyo Sharingan, Itachi said in a low and emotionless voice the name of his jutsu.

"Amaterasu." Itachi said as black flames appeared upon his father's body and his father let loose a blood curdling scream.

"Goodbye father." Itachi said as he turned away and left his screaming father to burn to death.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Kumogakure – Training Field 15 – Time of Uchiha Massacre

At the same time that Itachi was obliterating his clan, in the lone forest training grounds, commonly referred to as Training Field 15 which consisted of large pines and boulders spread out among the swirling shadows created by the sun or moon shining through the leaves, you could find three boys hard at training.

These three boys are none of than Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha, and Neji Hyuga. They had been released from their academy class earlier in the day, and they had come straight to this training ground. For some reason, out of all of the training grounds, this one felt the most natural to them. So this is where they trained together.

Neji was standing by himself surrounded by a few trees and boulders, his byakugan active and looking for his two friends. He was using his bygakugan's ability to see through objects and it's near 360 degree vision to try and find his two friends before the time limit of thirty seconds was up. That was the exercise, designed to make finding people with his byakugan faster and easier.

When he had first learned to activate his byakugan, it had been through Bee telling him to try and push his chakra to his eyes. He had gathered his chakra and started pushing it towards his eyes, and it had been very difficult to say the least.

Most Hyuga his age had to utilize hand signs to activate their byakugan, and he was attempting to use his the same way that the older generation had learned to do. It required an impeccable chakra control and it had taken him nearly a month of attempting to activate his byakugan before he finally had been able to do it.

When Neji had learned from Bee how most Hyuga use their Byakugan, he had been tempted to ask him how he knew that, but his two friends and himself had long ago stopped caring about their past home and families.

Even though sometimes the three of them suspected that the story given to them about how they were found was a lie, they let it pass and just didn't think about it. They had a home and family here; just the three of them and Bee, and that was all they needed.

He had another fifteen seconds to go before the exercise would be over and he still hadn't found a single one of them. That was the second part of the exercise, to strengthen their stealth skills to the point that even a Hyuga would have a hard time spotting them. It was working.

Then a small black and white blur caught Neji's attention. It was off in the Northeastern portion of the training field and so he turned his full attention to that part of the forest. Combing over each spot of that location with his eyes, after about five seconds Neji smiled.

"Gotcha Sasuke." Neji said out loud as he flipped a kunai from his holster and twirled it with his fingers before slapping his palm around the grip with an audible slapping sound and Sasuke froze where he was.

The reason for the kunai was because the first portion of the exercise was almost over, and once the time ran out, he would be fighting both of the boys head on. Since he was a year older than the two of them and he had a year at the academy on them as well, the two boys had decided that he needed the most of the pummeling that came from the second part of the exercise.

He knew where Sasuke's attack would be coming from, so the only problem now was that he still didn't know where the blond menace's attack would be coming from since he hadn't located him. This all meant that the boy had the ability to attack him from anywhere in the forest and he would have to slip his concentration from Sasuke's attacks to watch for his.

"Oh well, when was the last time I was actually able to catch sight of him in thirty seconds anyways. He had long ago learned how to effectively hide from me and everybody else." Neji thought to himself about his blond haired friend.

Naruto had long ago learned how to hide from just about everybody in the village, and the worst part was he just did it; he wasn't doing it on purpose most of the time. The only person who actually was able to find him after taking the time to focus all of his concentration on him was Neji.

This all led to the blond haired boy getting his nickname, the blond menace. Because he had learned that it was hard for others to catch him, he had developed a mischievous streak and started pranking people whenever he got the chance.

However, even though given the right amount of concentration, it would take a whole lot longer than thirty seconds and so Neji was in the same boat as everybody else when it came to this exercise. That of course is why when Sasuke launched his attack, Neji was completely missed the blond menace sneaking up on him from behind.

Sasuke flipped a few shuriken from his pouch and threw them at Neji only for Neji to grab his own and fling them at his and send them scattering all over the forest floor. The next thing Neji knew was that Sasuke was running between trees heading straight at him.

Raising his kunai and smiling at Sasuke's running form, he paused when Sasuke got to him and had a smile on his own face. A second later Neji he felt the blade of a katana on his collarbone from behind and he had to let out a sigh. He had let his concentration slip again and Naruto snuck up from behind him.

"Yeah, I win, I win." Naruto shouted out after sheathing his katana and started punching the air while jumping up and down.

The reason that Naruto was so excited was that they had made a bet after their last exercise and Neji had forgotten all about it or he would have probably focused harder on trying to find the boy, regardless of whether or not it would have been a futile attempt. The boy was just too good to be caught within thirty seconds. The bet had been that if Naruto won, Neji would have to treat them both to ramen. On the flipside, if Naruto lost, he wouldn't be able to eat his heavenly food for a full two weeks.

"Oh well, come on you two, let's be getting home." Neji sighed to his two friends before setting out to head home with his two friends falling in stride on each side of him.

Konohagakure – Uchiha Compound – One Hour after the Uchiha Massacre

It was still night time, and no one had come to the compound and noticed the bodies yet, so he still had a little time to gather what he came for. A man was walking slowly through the bodies, bending down every once in a while to take something from the bodies. He would put them into some kind of glass jar with a green liquid that he had with him.

The man continued walking towards the clan head's house. He was dressed in a grey cloak that left his entire right arm encased inside of it. He also was wearing wrappings on his head that covered his right side of his head from the ear up. His right eye was also covered by the bandages. Finally reaching the clan head's house, he opened the door and walked in.

That was when a truly grotesque sight met his eyes. In front of him laid Fugaku Uchiha, the clan head. The only thing was that the man wasn't dead. However, the black flames were still licking around the house and that made Danzo realize that Itachi must have gained Amaterasu and that the man in front of him had somehow gotten the black flames off of him after Itachi had left him to burn to death.

"You, you had Itachi do this didn't you, Danzo?" Fugaku croaked towards the man that had walked inside his house.

"Yes, yes I did." Danzo said before blowing on a kunai he held in left hand and continuing to breath as if he was breathing upon a sword and then charging at the obviously chakra depleted Uchiha.

Fugaku could do nothing as he saw Danzo create his Wind Release: Vacuum Blade and charge at him, obviously intent on killing him. Closing his eyes, Fugaku wondered what his clan could possibly have done in the past to deserve the fate dealt out to them. All of them killed by his eldest son and no one to continue the clan.

Right before Danzo slashed his head off with his blade, he remembered that his eldest son wasn't the last Uchiha, and he smiled as he remembered that his youngest son was at least safe from what had happened to the rest of them. His last thoughts were of Sasuke and hoping that the boy was happy where he was.

Danzo released the jutsu on his kunai before placing back within the folds of his robes. He knelt down next to the decapitated head of Fugaku and his placed his index and middle finger above his left eye and his thumb beneath it. Applying pressure and chakra, the eye popped out after a few seconds and he placed it inside a new jar before repeating the process with the other eye.

"Hmm, hopefully his ability to control Amaterasu came from his eyes and I can take that power for myself." Danzo mused aloud as he snapped the jar's lid on and hid it as well within the folds of his robes before turning to leave the sight of the bloody massacre.

Konohagakure – Uchiha Compound – Two Hours after the Uchiha Massacre

Nearly twenty minutes after Danzo had collected some of the Uchiha's eyes, another man could be found collecting the rest of the eyes in the Uchiha Compound. This man finally finished his bloody task and stood up straight after collecting the last eye. All of a sudden a swirling pattern appeared around the man's orange mask and he suddenly disappeared.

Kumogakure – Ramen Stand – Three Hours after the Uchiha Massacre

Akane stood behind the bar of her father's ramen stand and looked at the three boy's eating at the bar. She had just dished two of them their second bowl, and the third had just ordered his sixth. She couldn't help but giggle at the sight of the three, since it was truly funny.

Naruto was slurping his food down as if he hadn't had it for years, even though Akane knew that wasn't true since he had been in there earlier that day. Neji was watching the blond boy with something akin to fear as he saw him eating bowl after bowl. The reason for this would soon become clear when Neji had to pay for everything.

Then there was Sasuke Uchiha, who was attempting to slouch down in his seat to avoid the person who had just noticed him and let out a girly squeal. It was one of the fan girls from the academy and he hated all of them so much for the way they treated him. All he wanted was for them to stop, because it bugged the shit out of him how they just fawned and fought all over him.

Then Naruto ordered his seventh bowl and Neji almost screamed at him to stop eating so much. "Yep, truly funny." Akame thought to herself as she lightly giggled.

Konohagakure – Inuzuka Compound – Six Hours after the Uchiha Massacre

Hana Inuzuka was standing at the top of the staircase as she listened to what the ANBU was telling her mom. The ANBU had showed up and Tsume had told her older daughter to go upstairs after a signal from the ANBU telling her that what he was going to tell her was something that her daughter wasn't supposed to be privy to.

This of course is why she had to slap her hand to her mouth when she heard what came from the ANBU's mout before she gasped out in surprise. The ANBU had just told her that Itachi Uchiha had just massacred his entire clan and that she had been ordered by the Hokage to gather her best trackers and set out after the boy.

Hana hadn't been around the boy much, but she had worked a few tracking cases and the boy had showed up on the scene as he was one of the best ANBU there was. She also remembered him from their first year in the academy. Everybody in the academy that year remembered the boy, since he graduated the first year there.

After hearing the ANBU leave, she was shocked to find her mother standing in front of her with an understanding smile on her face. She had been dating a young Uchiha boy and even though she didn't approve of the two of them, she knew what must be going through her daughter's mind at the moment.

However, she didn't have the time to talk to her daughter about it, since she still had to gather the other Inuzuka and go and track the boy so she grabbed her daughter and lifted her up and carried her to her bedroom.

Telling her that she would be back as soon as she could and that they would talk about what she had heard then, she left her daughter there and headed out to get to work. It was going to be a long day if the boy had a six hour lead on them and he was as good as he was to begin with.

A little while after her mother closed her door, it reopened and in walked her little brother Kiba. The little boy had been listening to since his curiosity always got the better of him, and like all Inuzuka, had gotten worried about his big sister when she had started acting the way she had.

So he went in there to try and cheer her up like any good little brother would do. Only, it would appear that she didn't want her little brother cheering her up at the moment, since when he walked in and she noticed him, he got a pillow to the head and was told in no uncertain terms to leave her room or she would sick the Haimaru triplets on him.

He had thought that she didn't want him to cheer her up and so he got really angry and left after slamming his door behind himself. If he only knew that the only reason she didn't want him in there was so that he didn't see the tears streaming down her face. After all, Inuzuka weren't supposed to cry. They were supposed to be too tough.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Kumogakure – Training Ground 15 – One Year after the Uchiha Massacre

If someone were to have been watching the three boy's training a year ago and be watching them now, there would be only really one big difference in the two exercises. Instead of Neji being in the relative center of the training ground, they would now see the blond menace in the middle of it with his hands forming a ram seal.

They had discovered nearly six months ago that Naruto could utilize a sensory chakra jutsu. They had discovered it quite on accident. They had been being training in gathering their chakra so that and then holding it in.

They were told that sometimes they would find themselves in a position where they had time to gather large amounts of chakra for big jutsu and then they would have to wait before being able to unleash it. So the exercise had been created to teach students how to hold their chakra for as long as they could so that when the opportune moment came to unleash their jutsu, they still could.

They had been told that when they couldn't hold their chakra in anymore, that it would just recede back into their body, however when Naruto couldn't hold his in anymore, it rolled off of him in a wave. He had fallen to his knees because he had been using a lot of chakra in that exercise and he just lost it all.

However, before he blacked out, he realized that within seconds of releasing the chakra the way he had, he got a mental picture of just about everything in a half mile radius. He wasn't able to think about it until he woke up from his state of unconsciousness and he told Bee about what he had felt.

Bee had Neji activate his byakugan and then told Naruto to do everything that he had done, except tone down the amount of chakra he used since it seemed that it wouldn't go back into his body like everyone else's.

He had placed his hands in the ram seal and started gathering chakra again. Once he gathered what he thought was enough, he released it and again it cascaded down his body and outwards from there. Again he got a mental picture of his surroundings and the people and objects within them.

With his byakugan activated, Neji watched as he gathered his chakra into his body and let it loose after a few seconds of gathering. He watched with amazement appearing on his face as he saw the chakra cascade down his body and then hit the floor. The chakra continued in a perfect circle from there and reached out nearly thirty feet in any direction.

Before he knew it the chakra had reached the position that Sasuke was standing in and it rolled up the boy's body. Next it happened to Bee's body and a book shelf before it finally reached him. It rolled up his body and when it passed over his eyes, he felt an extreme pain in his eyes as everything turned pure white and he deactivated his byakugan as a reflex.

When Neji had screamed out in pain at the chakra rolling over his eyes, Bee had run over to him and had laid him down on the ground and asked him what was wrong. Neji then told them everything that he had seen and he told them about how when it rolled over his byakugan it had been like someone had flashed a flare directly in his face.

They all flinched at his description of the pain to his eyes because they had all had the survival class and had each accidentally looked directly into the flare. To say the least, the flare hurt their eyes like a bitch. When Naruto told them about how he had gotten a mental picture of everything around him Neji had realized that it was some kind of chakra echolocation or something like that.

Neji told them all his theory and Bee struck a thoughtful pose before telling them that he wanted them to continue to help Neji with his byakugan training, but he also wanted them to help Naruto develop this ability as well. He then looked at Neji and told him to make sure his eyes were deactivated when they did this.

The reason that they decided to do it in the forest was because Naruto had tried it in the village and it had been too difficult to get a clear image of his surroundings with their being so many buildings and people around him.

The forest was a little easier, but it was still difficult as the trees and the wildlife in the training grounds made it hard for him to focus on the things in the mental image that he got. It had taken several weeks of trying it in the forest before he finally was able to get a hazy image of one of them. It had taken him another couple of weeks to get hazy images of both.

It had seemed that the more he practiced, the clearer his mental image would become, so he suckered them into training with him every time that they training with Neji. The image was still hazy, but at least now the trees were no longer hazy and it made picking them out a whole lot easier. Still, it remained a challenge and he had the same time limit that Neji had of thirty seconds to do it in.

Ten seconds in he found the hazy image of Sasuke and shouted out at him. "Sasuke, gotcha, ten feet ahead, north east."

Now he just needed to find Neji within twenty seconds and he would be able to know where each were for the spar that would come next. Fifteen seconds later, he finally picked Neji's hazy image out of the haze created by several trees too close to each other.

"Neji, gotcha, fifteen feet, south west." Naruto yelled out at his other friend and then unsheathed his katana that was hanging at his back.

The katana was made of a pure black material and it had a pure white handle. He had suckered Bee into buying it for him when they had discovered that he had a true talent for kenjutsu during their kenjutsu training.

Time Skip – Around a Year Earlier

Bee had told him around three months into training that if he could land a single blow on him in the next week that he would buy him any katana he wanted. He had been completely unable to land a blow on Bee that day during training and in the middle of the night he had gotten an idea.

The next day he used his ability to sneak up on just about anyone and tapped him on the shoulder with his training katana. Since Bee hadn't said that it had to be in a spar, he had had to buy the boy his choice of katana's and they had gone shopping the next day.

He had seen the katana in the weapon's store and it was like love at first sight. He just had to have that particular katana and Bee was so happy that it hadn't been too expensive. It had cost him about fifty thousand ryo and he had smiled at the look of pure happiness on the blond menace's face.

Time Skip – Current

Sasuke and Neji both threw three shuriken at Naruto at the same time. Since Sasuke was closer, Naruto blocked each of his shuriken with his katana before jumping out of the way of Neji's shuriken. Naruto twisted in midair and blocked the kunai that Sasuke had thusted at him after launching himself at the blond's side.

Naruto rolled his wrist and moved his katana to block the kunai that Neji had thrust at him when he had jumped at the boy's back side when he had blocked Sasuke's attack. Naruto then kicked at Sasuke, knocking in back and twisted before landing on the ground in one of his kenjutsu stances.

He kept his eyes on his two friends as they circled him and blocked the shuriken that Neji launched at him and then jumped to avoid the leg swipe that Sasuke had attempted to use on him when he was blocking Neji's shuriken.

He had to twist in midair to block Neji's kunai again and he kicked Neji in the gut as they landed on the ground before back flipping away from him. Sasuke was waiting for him at the end of his flip and Naruto barely had time to block the kunai thrust at him.

All of a sudden he felt cold razor sharp steel pricking the back of his neck and he knew that Neji had gotten him when he was blocking Sasuke. Naruto was so happy that he hadn't made any ramen related bets as he sheathed his katana and the three of them started walking back to the village.

"You two know that I am going to kick your asses one of these days don't you?" Naruto said out loud to his two friends that were walking on either side of him.

"As if." Came the simultaneous replies and all three of them broke into laughter.

The three boys had no clue that there was a man with a wild mane of white hair in the trees watching them with a sad smile on his face. It had taken him a full year before he had found a way into this thrice damned village. The man stood up and looked around before heading the other way.

He no longer wanted to take the three away, even if he could, because they were happy and he would be taking them back to a place where they wouldn't be happy. Jiraiya knew that Sasuke would be all alone since his clan had been massacred by his older brother.

He knew that taking Neji back would only make him have to live with the crushing existence that any branch member of the Hyuga clan had to live with and he didn't wish that existence on anyone. Then there was Naruto. His godson had finally found friends and he wasn't feared or hated here. He just couldn't take that happiness away from his godson.

As he left, he had no clue that there were two dark skinned men watching him with apprehension and then relief as he walked away in the other direction. One of the dark skinned men looked at the other before talking.

"Yo bro, that went as good as we could have hoped for that to go." Bee rapped to his brother.

Konohagakure – Training Ground 30 – One Year after the Uchiha Massacre

In this particular training ground, one would be able to find a young teenage girl with her hair pulled up into two twin buns. She was wearing a pink sleeveless blouse and dark green pants. This girl's name was Tenten.

Tenten had shuriken in between each of her knuckles and she had her arms up against her chest in the form of an X. Slowing breathing and focusing on the target, Tenten thrust out her arms and sent the shuriken at the targets. Only a few of them actually hit the targets.

She put her hand into her pouch to get more shuriken and her hand came out empty as she realized that she must have used up all of her shuriken already, again. She checked her other pouches before walking forward to gather her spent shuriken. She looked up at the sun and decided that she had trained enough today.

Tenten let a frown touch her face as she observed her work. She didn't understand it. For some reason, she just couldn't get her weapons to fly straight to their target. She started gathering up all of her spent shuriken, which took her nearly a full five minute, since she had been at this nearly a full hour, tossing handfuls of shuriken continually. All the while she was gathering her shuriken, she was thinking about how pitiful her aim was and that she needed to improve.

She looked up at the sun once she had picked up all of her shuriken and then deciding that she still had enough sunlight, she got back into position twenty feet from her targets and before placing shuriken in the grooves between each knuckle. Again she thrust her arms out and let loose the shuriken before grabbing more from her now full pouch and doing it again.

Off in the trees a girl was watching her impassively behind a porcelain mask. This girl was an ANBU and she had come to this training ground to train, but she had found it already being used and she had been about to leave, but something about the girl made her stay and watch.

She couldn't help but admire the girl's tenacity and determination. The girl wasn't going to give up trying to make her shuriken fly true. Watching the girl, she was wondering if she should go out there and give the girl some help.

She understood the drive to make one's self better, after all that is why she had joined the ANBU in the first place. However, she wasn't certain whether or not she should. She had been about to leave the girl behind when she saw the girl walk forward and start gathering her shuriken.

She was figuring that the girl was finally calling it quits, but she realized after the girl had lined back up and started throwing her shuriken again that she had been wrong. She just couldn't help but admire the girl's determination that she decided to go and help a bit.

Walking forward out of the trees, she gave a hand sign for her partners to stay behind. It took her a few minutes to get out of the trees because they were so thick and by the time she had the girl had already filled her fist with shuriken again and was about to toss them. She took a moment to study the girl's form and noticed that the girl was twisting her wrists a little when she thrust her arms out.

"You need to make sure you keep your wrists locked when you thrust out your arms. It is throwing your aim off." She said out loud after the girl had tossed her shuriken and gotten the same result.

Tenten jumped into the air and was burying her fist into her pouch when she heard the voice talk out to her. She couldn't help it; it was a natural reflex that she had learned to develop to stop others from sneaking up on her. When she realized that it was an ANBU, she allowed the shuriken that she was about to pull out of her pouch to fall back in.

"I'm sorry, you scared me and I didn't hear what you said?" Tenten asked, embarrassed that she had reacted the way she had and then hadn't even heard the ANBU's statement.

"It's no problem. I understand why you reacted the way you did, it is normal." The ANBU said before continuing. "I said that you need to lock your wrists before thrusting your arms out. You're twisting your wrists just the smallest amount, but it is enough to throw off your trajectory." The ANBU said as she looked at the young girl in front of her.

Tenten thought about what the woman said and thought back over what she did before throwing her shuriken. Sure enough, she remembered that her wrists did twist a little, and she was so embarrassed that she didn't catch that herself.

Turning back to the targets, she stuffed her hand back into the pouches before pulling out two fistfuls of shuriken and loading each hand with them. Crossing her arms in front of her chest, she made sure to lock her wrists.

She slowed her breathing again and calmed her mind. Then she thrust her arms out and let the shuriken fly and sure enough, they flew true and every single one of them impacted within the center areas of the targets.

She turned around to the ANBU to thank her and she saw that the ANBU was walking away. Quickly yelling out her thanks, she finished with telling the ANBU her name and then asking her own. She didn't think about the fact that ANBU normally try to remain anonymous.

The ANBU stopped at the forest edge and gave small hand signal towards the forest. Without turning around, told her it was nice to meet her and she was glad that she could help her with her training. Suddenly her three partners joined her on the outskirts of the forest and she told the girl her name.

"My name is Hana Inuzuka." Tenten heard the ANBU say as three identical dogs exited the forest and the four of them started walking away from the training ground.


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Kumogakure – Academy – Two Years after the Uchiha Massacre and Six Years after the Kidnapping

Two years after the gruesome and bloody affair that made up the largest genocide in hundreds of years, one could find one of the last two surviving Uchiha sitting in a pew while he listened to a teacher drone on about the uses of jutsu such as Kawarimi and henge jutsu.

"Why, in the name of Kami, do I stay in here and listen to this useless drivel?" Sasuke thought to himself, but not long after the question passed his mind did the answer come in the form of a loud scream somewhere else in the academy and the entire classroom either groaned or broke into fits of chuckles.

The reason he was in there was Naruto. That boy was just pure trouble, and the only safe place just happened to be where he was at the moment. The reason for that was simple, as there teacher just happened to be a jonin that was issued with teaching their class and the blond menace was scared shitless of her.

The jonin was the Nibi Jinchuriki, Yugito Nii, and she had her own reputation for pranking that dwarfed Naruto's like a mountain to a hill. Since he was no stranger to pranks, and he had heard rumors about some of the pranks that she had pulled off in her time, he was pretty sure that if he pranked her, she would just prank him back tenfold. Even though he was always up for a challenge, he figured that there was no way he would be able to come out of that one unscathed and so didn't feel like testing it.

This was the second year that she had that boy in her class, and she had seen teachers with multicolored powders in their hair. She had seen countless students and teachers have their hands stuck to kunai handles with super glue. She had seen another teacher sit on a chair with makibishi spikes. She had even seen inattentive teachers brew coffee only to find that the coffee had been replaced with dirt.

Even though everyone in this class and others knew that it was the blond menace that did all of these things, no one could ever catch him in the act. He was one sneaky little bastard. All of a sudden the door to their classroom opened and the subject of their groans and chuckles walked in with his hands behind his head. Sighing in contentment and satisfaction, the boy walked over and sat down next to Sasuke.

"Hey Naruto, I don't suppose you would happen to know what that entire racket we just heard is about, would you?" Yugito said as she looked up from the book and smirked at the boy. Sometimes she wished that she could join in on the fun that the kid had, but alas she had to teach.

"Well, since you mentioned it, I just happened to be passing a classroom where students were learning how to unseal objects and decided to stop and watch." Naruto said while returning her smirk. Several students broke back into chuckles and giggles at his blatant excuse to stop and watch his own handiwork.

"The teacher showed them how to unseal by unsealing a scroll that was supposed to contain a kunai pouch in it. So when he slammed his palm on the scroll, instead of having a kunai pouch pop into existence underneath his hand, he had what appeared to be a fresh cow turd pop into existence and his hand sank into it." Naruto said while a few students fell out of their chairs and rolled on the floor laughing.

"You know, I am so thankful that none of that pranking ever happens to me or this class. I wonder why that is." Yugito said with a small giggle as everyone started laughing even more.

Konohagakure – ANBU Headquarters – Two Years after the Uchiha Massacre and Six Years after the Kidnapping

Hana Inuzuka was walking into an interrogation cell nearly a hundred feet below the surface of Konoha. Once she was in the cell, she dropped the captive that she had caught earlier this week onto the floor like a sack of potatoes. The captive was a konoha chunin ranked nuke-nin that had deserted Konoha nearly five years ago and she had picked him out of the bingo book for her current mission.

Walking back out of the cell, she closed it behind herself and made sure that all of the locks were bolted before walking towards her commander's office. She had to give her report to her superior, and then she was going to go to the Inuzuka Compound to rest for a while before going to see if her 'student' wanted to train.

Ever since that day a year ago that she had seen Tenten training and she had given the girl a bit of advice, she would return to find her there hard at work. She had done this several times before she had decided to see if the girl would like to train under here. She had been so happy that she had decided to train her and her happiness was infectious. It made her smile for the first time in a long time.

Kumogakure – Training Ground 15 – Same Day

If anyone were present in Training Ground 15, they would find three boys sprinting towards a tree and jumping and running up the side of it, before starting to fall back down. Each of them would mark their spot on the tree with a slash of a kunai, before flipping in midair and landing in a crouch. They were trying to learn how to tree walk.

The three boys were each pretty even, with Neji a little in the lead. His control was just a little easier for him to manage then the other two, so he was able to get the hang of the exercise a bit faster than Naruto and Sasuke. However, their determination to continue and their reluctance to ever give up, more so for Naruto than Sasuke, fueled them along and they had caught up with their white eyed friend after about a week of training.

They were all three about three/fourths the way up their respective trees and they were slowly but surely getting higher. Truth be told, Naruto would be a lot further behind his two friends since his reserves were so high, if not for his larger reserves giving him the ability to train late into the night and make up for his slower rate of progress.

The three of them channeled chakra to their feet and sprinted towards their respective trees again. Neji got about another foot up the tree, while Sasuke and Naruto each got about another 8 inches up theirs. They each slashed their new mark before back flipping off of the trees and landing in crouches.

Neji and Sasuke were both panting as they were thoroughly exhausted, while Naruto was only breathing a little heavier than normal. Neji and Sasuke both looked at each other and a silent message was passed between the two raven haired boys. They both knew that if they didn't say that they were too tired to go on, that they would be here all night since there was no way that Naruto was going to stop anytime soon.

"Come on you two; let's go home for the night." Neji said as he stood up from his crouched position and dusted his pants off.

"Aw, come on. I was seriously about to start outpacing you two." Naruto said to his two friends, the hint of a smirk lifting at the edges of his lips.

"In your dreams squirt." Sasuke said in reply, a smirk clearly plastered on his face.

"Hey, how many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me squirt, duck butt?" Naruto replied with a smirk as Sasuke's left his face at the name he had just been called.

Neji, knowing that if he didn't intervene soon, that they were probably going to get into a spar, and then they would be here all night, decided to just grab his two friends and drag them along behind him. So he did just that as he walked up to Naruto and Sasuke and grabbed each of them by an ear and started dragging them back to their apartment, both boys yelling and struggling before they were able to get out of his grip.

As the three boys walked away bickering among themselves, none of them noticed a crow take to the sky from its perch on one of the trees among the training ground. The crow flew away from the village and continued to fly until it landed upon the outstretched hand of a raven haired boy who looked to be around 15 years old. The raven haired boy was sitting upon a branch of a tree and he had his head resting upon his chest.

The crow put its beak to the boy's ear and if anyone would have been watching, they would have thought that the crow was talking to the boy. After a few minutes of this, the crow suddenly disappeared in a puff of smoke and the boy lifted his head, revealing a pair of crimson eyes, the legendary sharingan.

"I have finally found you, my little brother." Itachi said as he jumped down from the tree and started walking down a path.

Konohagakure – Training Ground 30 – Same Day

If someone were to be walking through this training ground, they would find Tenten busy getting the hang of a new weapon that she had decided to try and learn how to use. The young kunoichi had the string to her recurve bow pulled back to her cheek as she breathed slowly and aimed the arrow at the target.

Twang, came the sound as she released the string. The sound was followed by a hearty thump as her arrow embedded itself deeply into the target nearly thirty feet away from herself. Without hesitation, she pulled another arrow from the quiver on her back and nocked it before repeating the process.

This continued for nearly fifteen minutes, with several breaks to collect her arrows and replenish her quiver with them, before getting straight back to it. The sun had just started setting when she became aware that she had an audience.

"You're getting better at that." Came the simple observation from the masked ANBU that stood with her three dogs watching her shoot her targets.

"Thanks, Hana!" Tenten cheerfully said as she took out a scroll and sealed her bow and arrows into, before taking another out and unsealing an expensive looking and intricately designed metal quarterstaff.

"I guess you're ready to spar." Hana said as she dropped into a crouch and her fingernails extended into claws.

Her three companions started to flank Tenten. Tenten allowed them to flank her as she started spinning the quarterstaff in her hands above her head. She stopped the spinning motion and held it diagonally behind her back as she threw her arm out with the palm facing the sky.

All three of the dogs sprung forward at the same time that Hana did as well, and Tenten jumped over the snapping jaws of the first attack before slapping the other dog in the gut with her staff. Spinning on her left heel, she blocked a swipe from one of Hana's hands, before spinning again and jumping over another set of snapping teeth.

She only had a second after she landed before she was rushed again and she smacked one of the dog's legs out from underneath it before finding a pair of teeth latched onto the end of her quarterstaff. Showing amazing strength for a girl her age, she lifted the dog off of its feet and spun on her heel. The dog let go of the quarterstaff after a few seconds and was thrown bodily into a lunging Hana.

Suddenly the ground at Tenten's feet broke apart as the third dog jumped out of it, its jaws snapping at her leg. Placing one end of her quarterstaff on the ground, she used it to pole-vault herself away from the dog trying to bite her leg. Landing, she again settled into her ready stance, her quarterstaff held diagonally behind herself as her left arm was out with the palm facing the sky.

Hana, finally was able to untangle herself from her dog that had been thrown at her and as she stood up she started flipping through a set of hand seals. Finally, she ended with her hands in the monkey seal and electricity started crackling into existence around her, before coalescing into nearly ten senbon.

"Lightning Release: Lightning Senbon!" Hana shouted form behind her mask as the senbon streaked towards Tenten.

Tenten only had a few seconds before the senbon got to her, but that was all that she needed. Channeling wind chakra into the specially made metal that the quarterstaff was made of, she started spinning it rapidly in front of herself, intercepting and destroying each of the lightning senbon.

The only thing was that while she was busy destroying the lightning senbon, Hana's dogs had flanked her and each two of them grabbed ahold of a leg each and the third grabbed onto her forearm. They didn't sink their teeth into her skin, but they held her still all the same.

Lowering the quarterstaff down to her side, Tenten lowered her head in shame at falling for the obvious trap that she had just been led into. She looked down at her feet for a few seconds before Hana's hand lifted her chin up to look her in the face.

What she saw made her smile. Hana had taken her mask off of her face and was smiling at the young girl in front of her. Hana didn't often take her mask off in front of others that weren't Inuzuka, but one person that could claim to see her face every once in a while was Tenten. She wanted the girl that made her smile again after so long to see her smile.

"You did great Tenten. You truly are going to be a great Kunoichi." Hana said with a smile as she saw Tenten cheer up at her face.

"You want to go again Hana?" Tenten asked with her smile still on her face.

"Sure, why not." Hana answered back with her own smile before slipping her mask back onto her face and falling into her crouched ready stance while Tenten fell into her own ready stance.


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Kumogakure – Raikage Tower – Six Years after the Kidnapping and Two Years after the Uchiha Massacre

A was sitting behind his desk, lifting a 150 pound dumbbell with his left hand while he signed papers with his right. After a few minutes, he switched hands and was lifting the dumbbell with his right hand and using his left to sign the papers. Suddenly, the door to his office opened and in the door way stood a raven haired man with crimson eyes.

"Itachi Uchiha, now what do I owe the pleasure of meeting with you for?" A said as he placed his dumbbell on the stand next to his desk.

Ignoring the Raikage's question and walking forward, Itachi completely ignored the killing intent that the Raikage was giving off for being ignored. Itachi sat on the edge of the desk and looked out at the sprawling village underneath them. After a few moments, he looked towards A.

"A little birdy tells me that my brother is here in your village." Itachi said with his emotionless drawl.

"What if he is?" A said, tensing his muscles, ready to react to the slightest sign that Itachi meant him harm.

"Give him this." Itachi said after a few more moments of looking out at the village.

"This contains the scrolls of our clan. Only one of Uchiha blood can open this scroll and only one who possesses the Sharingan can read the clan scrolls within." Itachi said as he took a scroll out of his cloak and laid it on the Raikage's desk.

"Unfortunately, he won't be able to read these until he has activated his sharingan. At least he will have these when he does unlock them." Itachi said as he continued to stare out the window.

"Why are you doing this?" A said as he was experiencing such an extreme feeling of confusion.

"I don't want my clan do die out, and you unwittingly saved his life and gave our clan a second chance. Take care of my brother." Itachi said before his body dispersed into nearly thirty crows and they all flew out one of the windows that were open.

Kumogakure – Jutsu Archive – Seven Years after the Kidnapping and Three Years after the Uchiha Massacre

Sending out another chakra pulse, Naruto was satisfied that there weren't any guards around and so he snuck silently into the building that held what he wanted. Bee had started teaching them how to seal objects in scrolls, and he had gotten the hang of it so quickly.

Afterwards, he had asked Bee if there were any other types of sealing techniques that he could teach him. Bee had told him that he himself didn't know any others, however, he accidentally let slip that there was a building that housed all of their sealing techniques. He had called it their jutsu archive.

It had taken Naruto nearly a full month to locate the thrice damned building. Not many people would talk about it to him. He had finally been able to get Yugito to tell him about it, telling her it had to do with an awesome prank. She had wanted to help the boy out in his pranks for a long while now.

So the night after she had shown him where the building was, he snuck out and quietly made his way to the building. He would send out a pulse of chakra every ten to twenty seconds. Every time he felt a patrol, he would hide and allow them to pass before going back on his way.

Finally inside the building, he looked around until he found an index of sorts that told what each room held. Finding that the third room on the second floor was dedicated to the art of Fuinjutsu, he silently made his way up the stairs and walked down the hallway. As he walked in the room, he slowly spun around and his eyes widened at the sheer number of scrolls and tomes.

"This is going to take a while." Naruto said out loud to himself.

Konohagakure – Hokage Tower – Eight Years after the Kidnapping and Four Years after the Uchiha Massacre

Hiruzen Sarutobi stood behind his desk looking out upon the village from the windows in his office. Like he did just about every time he looked out the window, he looked up at Minato's face upon the Hokage Monument and offered a silent apology for failing him.

"Hokage, if you would please accept this request, I would like to take Tenten on and train her myself." Came the soft voice from the ANBU that stood behind Hiruzen Sarutobi.

"Hmm, have you asked her if she would like to become a hunter-nin?" Hiruzen asked without turning around.

"I have. She has expressed desire to train by my side and to join the ranks of ANBU, more specifically the hunter-nins." The ANBU said as she continued to stare at the Hokage's back.

"Very well Hana, I shall grant you this request. She will be placed upon a genin team. Train her for two years' time while she is on this team and then she may be judged to see if she is fit to join the hunter-nin program." Hiruzen said before dismissing her.

Kumogakure – Training Ground 15 – Same Day

"Okay, you three remember the seals I told you to perform?" Naruto asked Sasuke and Neji who were standing with him in the formation of a triangle.

"Well then, let's get this show on the road." Naruto said as they all three started flipping through the hand seals that each of them had to use.

It had taken him nearly a full year to find this particular jutsu in that room, and he had convinced Sasuke and Neji to help him try it out. It had taken two things for him to convince them to help him with this. First, he had to tell them exactly how he came across the jutsu. Second, he had to promise to take them with him the next time he went.

Finally finishing their hand seals, with Naruto ending with the bird seal, Sasuke ending with the tiger seal, and Neji ending with the dragon seal, they each slapped their hands down onto scrolls that rested a foot away from their feet, each scroll touching the other and forming a triangle.

"Fuinjutsu: Lightning Pyramid Barrier Sealing Technique!" Each of them shouted at the same time and a blue shimmery field came into existence in the form of a perfect pyramid touching the inside edges of the scrolls.

Inside of the barrier they could barely see the pack that they had laid down for this experiment. They each stood up and back away from the barrier and Sasuke picked up a branch and tossed it at his side of the barrier. The moment the branch hit the barrier it was turned into ash by a bolt of lightning that enveloped it.

"Fuin!" Naruto shouted after flipping through a few more hand seals and ending again with the bird seal.

What happened then made them all look on with awe and made them have complete respect for the awesome power of fuinjutsu. With a blinding flash and a resounding clap of thunder, the barrier imploded on itself and when it was gone the pack that was inside of it was gone as well. A second later a blank space on each of the scrolls was suddenly filled with the kanji for object. A second later the three scrolls burst into flame and were turned to ash, the pack never reappearing.

"Damn!" Came from each of their mouths at the exact same time and Neji and Sasuke were feeling rather jealous that they didn't have the skill for fuinjutsu that Naruto had.

Konohagakure – Training Ground 30 – The Next Day

"Okay Tenten, I want you to watch me and then try it out yourself. I believe you will love this technique once you get it down." Hana said as she pulled a single shuriken from her pouch and threw it at one of the training dummies and then Hana started flipping through hand seals and finished on the tiger seal.

"Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique!" Hana shouted as the lone shuriken turned into nearly twenty shuriken.

Tenten watched in amazement as that one lone shuriken turned into twenty shuriken and she hurriedly stuck her hands into her own pouch and pulled out six shuriken. She tossed them all at separate dummies and flipped her hands through the seals that she had seen Hana use.

"Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique!" Tenten yelled out as she watched each of her shuriken turn into five shuriken, with each of them dealing what would have been a fatal blow to the dummies.

Hana looked at her new student's results and couldn't help but feel proud of the young kunoichi. With a practice, she had no doubt that the girl would become one of Konoha's greatest weapon's masters. Walking up to Tenten, she put her hand on the girl's shoulder and smiled down at her and earned a smile in return.

Kumogakure – Training Field 15 – One Year Later

They had finally all graduated from the academy. A had put them all three on the same team and had Bee become the jonin sensei for them. They had gone to have ramen for a celebration, and now they could be found having a friendly spar in the training ground that had unofficially become known as their training ground.

"Remember you two; the only rules are no crotch shots and no fatal shots." Naruto said to Sasuke and Neji before he jumped back and allowed the two of them to have their spar.

"Well then Neji, let's see if you can beat me." Sasuke said with a smirk on his face.

"Yes, let's." Neji said with an equally smug expression on his face.

Neji activated his byakugan and dashed at Sasuke, only for Sasuke to jump into the air and start flipping through hand seals and ending on the tiger seal. Sasuke took a deep breath and infused the air in his lungs with the fire chakra and placed his hand with his thumb and index finger making a ring in front of his mouth before shouting out the name of his jutsu.

"Fire Release: Fire Ball Jutsu!" Sasuke shouted before exhaling a ball of flame through his fingers that were in the shape of a ring.

Neji saw it all happening with his byakugan activated. He saw Sasuke flip through his hand seals as clear as day. He saw him infuse his breath with fire chakra. He then saw him lift his fingers to his mouth in the shape of a ring. All of this combined, he knew exactly what his teammate was going to do before he even said the name of his jutsu.

All of that said, he still had to dodge the thrice damned fireball and the thing was positively humongous. Leaping from tree branch to tree branch, Neji was finally able to get high enough in the air to avoid the fireball. Then a smirk crossed his lips.

Sasuke had followed Neji's progress while leaping through branches and climbing a little slower than him. He finally saw him stop and launched himself at his teammate. Spinning in midair, he tried to kick Neji with a roundhouse, but Neji spun around at the last second and hit his calf with his index and middle fingers.

The moment that Neji had hit his calf with his index and middle fingers, he had suddenly felt his leg go a little numb. Already cursing the fact that he was the first to take a hit in the spar, he jumped away and started flipping through hand seals again.

"Fire Release: Art of the Dragon's Breath Phoenix Technique!" Sasuke shouted before excelling several fist sized fireballs at Neji.

"Hmm, that's new. Must have been what Naruto found for him in that building." Neji thought to himself as he watched the entire process before jumping back down into the forest.

"Well, next time he attacks I am going to use that jutsu that I heard about from reports of Hyuga that Naruto found for me." Neji thought as he jumped from branch to branch continually dodging the fireballs that were shot at him.

Again a smirk crossed his lips when he saw Sasuke following him through the forest. Deciding to take this to an area that didn't have so many trees in it, he led his friend to one of the only hills that suited his needs. Suddenly Sasuke appeared and launched another fireball at him.

"Gentle Fist Style: Eight Trigrams Rotation!" Neji said as he spun on his left heel and started exuding chakra from half of the chakra points in his body.

Even though he wasn't skilled enough in it to pour the chakra form every one of his chakra points, the jutsu still had the desired effect. The moment he started spinning on his heel, the chakra formed a sphere around him and it protected him from the fireball that Sasuke had created.

"You're within my field of divination." Neji said with a smirk at the wide eyed look Sasuke had when he saw his rotation technique before settling into the gentle fist style taijutsu stance.

"Gentle Fist Style: Eight Trigrams Sixty Four Palms!" Neji roared as he rushed at Sasuke.

"Two Palms."

"Four Palm."

"Eight Palm."

"Sixteen Palm."

"Thirty-two Palm."

"Sixty-four Palm."

Neji was so preoccupied with attempting to strike the tenketsu that weren't around organs, because it wouldn't do to accidentally kill his teammate and friend, that he missed two things. One, he didn't hit with all of his attacks and that alone should have told him something. Two, Sasuke's eyes turned crimson about halfway through his barrage.

About the time that Neji had yelled out 'Eight Palm', he had started to 'see' the chakra that Neji was using to close his tenketsu. It took him a few moments to figure out just what that meant, but by the time that Neji had said 'Thirty-two Palm', Sasuke realized that his Sharingan had activated.

"Finally, these damned eyes have opened. I can finally see." Sasuke said under his breath as he deflected Neji's thrusts to other parts of his body so that they didn't hit his tenketsu.

"You're finished." Neji smirked at Sasuke, and after a few seconds his smirk died away as he finally noticed the crimson eyes with a single spinning tomoe in each eye.

"Are you sure about that?" Sasuke said with his own smirk when he saw Neji lose his own.

Sasuke tried to rush Neji, the only problem was that first 32 tenketsu that got closed. A large number of them just happened to reside in his legs and he collapsed the moment he tried to step forward. Neji regained his smirk at this.

"Yeah, I'm sure." Neji said as he went to help Sasuke stand and unseal the boy's tenketsu.

* * *

There you guys go. The three of them have graduated the academy and they are on the same team. Next chapter will show them going out on their first C ranked mission, after a full out spar with Bee to prove they are ready. Thanks for reading and reviewing. Please review and tell me what you think about the spar between Neji and Sasuke. Also, tell me what you think about how I had Sasuke activate his sharingan. Also, how you like my little fuinjutsu that I had them all use together. Also, how you feel about Tenten becoming a Hunter nin in the future. Next chapter will also show who her regular genin team will be. Again, thanks for reading and reviewing. Till next time.


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Kumogakure – Training Ground 15 – 6 Months Since Graduation

Naruto, Sasuke, and Neji all three stood in the clearing at Training Ground 15. It had been 6 months since Naruto and Sasuke graduated from the academy, 1 year and 6 months since Neji graduated, and they were sick and tired of the training missions they kept being sent on. So that was why they were here today.

A week ago, they had convinced A that if they did well in a spar against Bee, that he should allow them to take on a C rank mission. He had accepted their idea, truth be told he was merely waiting for something like this occur, and told them to meet here at 10 o'clock. It was now 9:55 and Naruto was like a baby hyped up on chakra pills. He just couldn't sit still.

Bee and A arrived at 10 o'clock on the dot, and Neji and Sasuke got up to join Naruto who had been stretching already. Once they were finished A explained the rules of the spar to them. It was a no bars held spar, with the exception of no crotch shots, they are all men after all, and no fatal shots.

Quickly agreeing, they all got into the ready stances. They knew exactly what they were going to do, they had come up with their plan earlier in the week and they figured that it was foolproof. Since they are only 12 and 13 years old, they haven't figured out that nothing is foolproof yet.

Sasuke and Neji rushed in to engage him while Naruto whipped out three scrolls and set them into a triangular position. He sat down in the lotus position in the center of the scolls and placed his hands in the seal for bird. Sasuke and Neji had to keep Bee occupied for a full thirty seconds for this fuinjutsu to take effect.

Neji activated his byakugan before rushing Bee. Settling into his gentle fist style, Neji started striking at Bee in his legs and arms. He was hitting Bee, but Bee was experienced enough to be able to channel chakra to the parts of his body that he blocked with, thus effectively negating Neji's attack.

Seeing this with his Sharingan, Sasuke started working his way to Bee's blind spot while Neji kept him occupied. Neji saw all of this and knew what he needed to do. He saw Sasuke start running through his hand seals and end with the seal for tiger. Sasuke took a large breath and mixed his fire chakra with the air in his lungs before letting it out in a rush. The same time that Sasuke blew out his fireball, Neji started spinning while exuding chakra from nearly thirty percent of his tenketsu.

"Fire Release: Fireball Jutsu!" Sasuke roared before he blew out a fireball about 3 meters in circumference.

"Gentle Fist Style: Eight Trigrams Rotation!" Neji said as he spun on his left heel and his partial chakra sphere appeared around him.

Bee was caught with his pants down for those two jutsu. He had no clue that the boy had that in his repertoire, he certainly didn't teach it to him. Then Neji utilized an incomplete form of the Kaiten, and he barely had enough time to use the Hachibi's chakra to form eight tails and cover his body with them. He eight tails protected him from the fireball, and it also protected him from Neji's incomplete Kaiten.

All in all, they were thinking that they must have been some pretty bad assed genin since they were keeping Bee away from Naruto for the time that he needed, but what they didn't realize was that Bee wanted to see what was going to happen and so he was letting them keep him away from Naruto. If he truly wanted to, he could have ruined their plans within seconds.

The thirty seconds came and Naruto started flipping through more sets of hand seals. He had to flip through fifty-eight hand seals to be exact and it took him another full two minutes to do this, since he had to make sure he got each of them correct or else the jutsu would be ruined. Finally, after many more fireballs from Sasuke and a couple more gentle fist strikes that did completely nothing to Bee, he finished the hand seals, ending on the bird hand seal.

"Fuinjutsu: Chakra Displacement Field!" Naruto yelled out as the scrolls all glowed bright blue before a wave of visible chakra washed out from the scrolls in a perfect circle.

The rush of chakra that was sent out went about fifty yards in any direction and once it had hit that mark it disappeared. Neji and Sasuke both smirked when they realized that the fuinjutsu had been cast. A and Bee both had looks of utter disbelief on their faces. The reason for the looks was they knew what that jutsu was and they obviously didn't expect a kid that age to be able to use a fuinjutsu that strong.

That particular fuinjutsu created a field where no chakra could be utilized. It was an A ranked fuinjutsu and they knew of only one place that Naruto could have learned that fuinjutsu. A had heard reports of slobber on scrolls and tomes in the jutsu archive, but he never would have guessed that it was these three kids sneaking in there and learning jutsu at night. He had to give them props for initiative.

"You ready to get your ass kicked Bee!" Naruto shouted at their jonin sensei.

They figured since Bee couldn't use chakra that they held the advantage in this fight. How wrong their young preteen brains were. They had never had a chance to see Bee utilize more than two of his blades, so it came as a surprise to them when he unsheathed all seven, throwing them all into the air and catching them in different spots.

He caught a blade each in the hinge joints of his right and left arms. He then caught another in between his shoulder blade and his neck. Another one he caught with his mouth. Another one he caught with his left armpit. Another one was caught at the hip joint of his right hip, and another one at the hinge joint of his right leg.

"You can't talk like that to me. I'm going to teach you a lesson, you see. So here comes the awesome Killer Bee, Wheeee." Came the somewhat muffled cry from their jonin sensei as he launched himself forward and started tearing into his three students.

He was showing his skill at kenjutsu since he was avoiding anything that could be a fatal blow and still dealing damage to his somewhat shell shocked students. A cut to one's left leg, another cut to one's right arm, and several other cuts later, and several knocks to heads with blunt sides of the blades, and his three students were lying on the ground unconscious.

"Bee, don't you think that was a little overkill." A asked with an exasperated voice and a somewhat worried look on his face as he looked at the three kids who were lying on the ground.

"They talked like they were big. I had to teach them a lesson, you dig." Bee rapped to his brother.

"So do you think they are ready?" A asked his brother, completely ignoring the fools rapping.

"Yep." Came Bee's reply as he picked his students up and started off in the direction of their apartment.

Konohagakure – Traning Ground 30 – A Week Later

Hana sat on a stump of a tree as she watched her partial student spar with her other sensei and genin team. She had to admit that they were good. Damn good. The sensei and one of the students were really weird though. Not many people could boast that their eyebrows were as big as those two's eyebrows were.

The jonin sensei was Might Guy. He stood at around six feet tall and he wore this absurdly looking green jumpsuit with orange leg warmers. He also wore a flak jacket. He had a bowl haircut and when he smiled, his teeth sparkled.

One of the teammates was a boy named Lee. He was literally a clone of Might Guy. Some people were honestly wondering if Orochimaru had gotten a hold of a sample of Guy's DNA and made Lee out of one of his experiments. Not only did he look like the man, but his suit was exactly the same, minus the flak jacket.

The third teammate was a pink haired kunoichi that was named Sakura. She was technically a year younger than Lee and Tenten, but she had been so smart that they allowed her to take the genin test a year earlier than normal and she had passed it.

As Hana watched the team spar, she couldn't help but categorize and evaluate their separate abilities. They truly had a good team makeup. Lee and Guy were their taijutsu experts. They were fast and their hits packed hidden strength.

Sakura was a genjutsu and medical specialist. She made it easier for Guy and Lee to get close to their opponents before they knew they were there. She also had the chakra control required to perform medical jutsu and could heal a lot of the injuries that her teammates acquired.

Then you had Tenten. She was a long range specialist. She had superb accuracy with all of her thrown weapons. She also acquired several jutsu that made thrown weapons even more dangerous. She had the Shadow Clone Shuriken Technique as well as the Water Release: Water Senbon Technique. She also had the ability to channel wind chakra to her weapons, making blocking them a very bad idea.

She saw Sakura place Guy underneath a genjutsu that held long enough for Lee to get in, but he was able to dispel it in time to block the roundhouse kick that would have knocked his block off if he hadn't. Then he had to quickly back flip away when about thirty senbon came out of nowhere and he could tell that they were aimed to take out his nerve clusters and render him unconscious.

Lee came back in with a wild haymaker that he blocked with his forearm and was thrown back about a foot before he dug his heel into the ground. Guy then hit Lee with a roundhouse kick that sent him sailing in the air. Guy dashed off to capitalize on his hit, but he had to back off when several shuriken came zooming in at him.

While Sakura healed the concussed Lee, Tenten kept Guy at a distance and kept him busy by a constant barrage of senbon and shuriken. After about ten seconds Lee woke up and leapt back into the fight with a passion. He sent a barrage of punches and kicks Guy's way and each of them were blocked.

It was only when Guy was hit by an invisible force and thrown five feet into the air before crashing back to the ground that he realized he had been placed in a genjutsu again. He really hated it when people messed with his head. Although, he realized how good it was for his team and decided to make sure he talked to a jonin he knew that might be able to help her get even better at it.

As he got up off of the ground and dusted his jumpsuit off, he looked up at the sun and decided that it was as good a time as any to stop the spar. They had been at it for nearly the full day as it was and as he looked over his students, he could tell that they were worn out.

"Okay guys, let's call it a day." Guy said while giving his thumbs up pose and smiling his pearly whites.

"Yosh, and what a youthful day it has been." Lee said while striking his own thumbs up pose and flashing his own pearly whites.

"Your right, it has been very youthful indeed." Guy said as he and Lee hugged and any that looked upon the seen were treated with a genjutsu of them hugging it out on a beach with waves crashing in the background.

Tenten, who had walked up to Hana and her ninken after Guy told them to call it a day, was able to save Hana the horror of seeing that particular genjutsu by covering her eyes with her hand. She was however unable to save the ninken the horror and they all howled at the air in obvious mental torture.

Having heard of the obviously distressing horror that those two could make someone feel when they were trapped in the genjutsu, Hana looked at her ninken before poking each of them with chakra pouring out of her fingers, effectively snapping them out of the genjutsu. However, the dogs still whined pitifully, obviously still remembering the scenes that had played out before their eyes.

"You are going to go with me on a hunt tomorrow. I finally got it approved and your sensei said that he was fine with it as well." Hana said as she looked away from her dogs and towards Tenten.

"Really, I'm finally going to be able to help you catch someone. Awesome." Tenten excitably said to the news she had just been given before laughing out loud at Hana's ninken. The three dogs were lying on the ground and they had placed their paws over their eyes as if they were trying to block out some image.

"Make sure to pack for a full month. We'll be setting out tomorrow and there is no telling how long it is going to take to track this particular fugitive down since the intel of him being near Kumogakure is a week old. Be at the village gates at 7 o'clock and we'll set out then." Hana said to Tenten as she shook her head at her ninkens' behavior before whistling at her dogs and walking away.

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Okay, so here is chapter 7. Hope you enjoyed the last one and this one as well. Thanks for reading and reviewing, to those of you who did. Remember to review on this one telling me what you think about it. Till next time.


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Land of Lightning – Nearly a Week after their Fight with Killer Bee

"Why did we get stuck with the damn sensory squad job?" Sasuke complained out loud for like the millionth time.

Their first C ranked mission was awesome in the eyes of Naruto and Neji. They were the sensory unit for a squad of chunin ninja that were escorting a nuke-nin from Konohagakure back to Kumogakure. Even though Naruto would have preferred to have gotten into something that was a little thicker with combat, he was at least content to be on a possibly dangerous mission.

Their job consisted of utilizing their sensory skills to detect, predict, and assist in thwarting any enemy shinobi surprises. Neji, since he was still young at almost fourteen years old, was only able to keep his byakugan active for so long at a time. So whenever he had to deactivate his eyes to take a momentary respite, Naruto would begin pinging his chakra for his chakra echolocation technique.

The main reason that Sasuke was so bitter about their assignment was the fact that his sharingan had not activated yet and it was a sore reminder for him. Not to mention the fact that he was useless in the first two parts of their mission. Thus it really wasn't any surprise that he finally shut up when Naruto told them that he felt something up ahead blockading the road and that he also felt the presence of several people. In fact, a manic gleam entered his eyes and his hand was twitching down at his kunai pouch.

Since they were assisting a squad of chunin, and since the nuke-nin's value in the bingo book had been lower than 50,000 ryo, they had been sent without B. The three of them looked at each other and a silent exchange passed between them. Naruto went back to the chunin squad to alert them of the obstruction, while Sasuke and Neji went to flank it from each side of the forest.

Having alerted the chunin squad, whom had decided to hunker down with their client inside their pyramid shaped defense line, Naruto went back forward and started walking slowly towards the obstruction. The moment he rounded the bend in the road and the obstruction came into view, two bandits flew at him from each side.

Not even hesitating in his step, Naruto pulled his katana out of its sheath and smacked one bandit across the face with the flat side of his blade and then pivoted on his right foot to dodge the badly aimed thrust from the other bandit. Trapping the bandit's blade inbetween his bicep and side, he twisted his upper body roughly towards the left and grinned when he the bandit drop his blade.

Ever the pacifist, Naruto jumped forwards and slammed the handle of his katana against the bandit's temple instead of killing him. He would never kill another human being if he could afford to avoid it. That was just who he was.

Turning back towards the obstruction in the road, Naruto gave a short whistle. He waited a few seconds and then his whistle was returned by two different whistles. Those were the signals that told each companion that the other was fine.

Naruto began rustling inside his pack and pulled out a scroll that he laid down on the ground. He gave another whistle that was again confirmed by two other ones telling him that his companions were ready. Naruto began flipping through hand seals before he stopped on the bird seal and then slapped his hands down onto the scroll at his feet.

"Fuinjutsu: Lightning Pyramid Barrier Sealing Technique!" Came Naruto's shout that was echoed by his two companions on the other side of the obstruction as a blue shimmery substance came into existence in the shape of a pyramid around the obstruction.

"Fuin!" Naruto shouted after flipping through a few more hand seals and ending again with the bird seal.

With a blinding flash and a resounding clap of thunder, the barrier imploded upon itself, sealing the obstruction into the scrolls at their feet before they burst into flames and crumbled to ash. Naruto blinked away the flash that lingered in his vision and saw his companions doing the same thing. They truly had to give fuinjutsu its credit, it had some awesome power.

Naruto looked over at his teammates and allowed a frown to mar his features for the briefest of a second. He saw that Neji had subdued his opponents without killing them, more than likely by shutting of some key tenktetsu.

However, it was Sasuke that had brought that frown on. The raven haired boy was standing next to two obviously dead bodies and blood was flecked across his hands. The worst part, was the fact that he had a smile on his face and it didn't look strained.

Land of Lightning – About a Mile Away

Hana was staring through her binoculars at the results of her two thousand ryo investment. She had done her reconnaissance earlier and found that Kumogakure had sent shinobi to protect the traitor that they were taking in.

So she had gone into the nearest town and had found some men whom were willing to try and take down some kids for a little money. She hadn't told them they were ninja of course. They probably wouldn't have done it then.

She watched as the bandits were cut down easily by what looked like three genin. There were just a few things about those genin that were just too interesting to her. If what they were making her think, things had just gotten a little complicated for her.

One was the blond haired boy. He wore a black shirt with a pair of matching pants. Over the shirt, he wore a black cloak that had red flames licking the bottom and the cuffs of his sleeves. He wore his Kumogakure headband on his forehead and it kept his unruly blond hair out of his eyes.

The second interesting thing was the second boy. He had raven hair that was kept long and smooth and was pulled back into a ponytail that reached his shoulder blades. He wore a pure white cloak that for some reason was able to avoid getting dirty. She had only ever met one clan that had the grace required to keep one's pure white cloak from getting even the smallest amount of dirt on them. He also just happened to be fighting like those ninja of that clan.

The third interesting thing started to get her blood to boil, but it also made her feel a sort of deep sadness that she hadn't felt for a long time. It was the third and last genin. He had raven hair that stuck up in the back like a duck's tail. He also wore the customary robes of a clan long though dead. He wore the Uchiha robes and he looked almost identical to his older brother.

Obviously, it wasn't hard for Hana to piece together just who these three boys were. It had been a big thing inside the Inuzuka clan, since nearly all of their number had been sent out to track down the people responsible for kidnapping an Uchiha boy, an Hyuga, and a non-descript and non-clan blond haired boy.

However, now that she saw how the blond haired boy operated, non-descript and non-clan was the last thing that she saw in the boy. He had the ability to use fuinjutsu that wasn't even taught to chunin ninja that showed an interest in the subject. It was that powerful. There weren't that many people that could use fuinjutsu to that level and the only clan that she could think of was one that was also thought to have been long ago wiped extinct. The clan was the Uzumaki clan that hailed from Uzushiogakure.

Now Hana had a very hard decision to make. She really should call this mission off and report back to Konohagakure about finding the location of the three missing children. However, they truly needed to at least neutralize this security threat before it could start running its mouth off. The only problem with that was Tenten.

If she had been on this mission alone, mind you that the only reason she was on here was to give Tenten a little experience, she would have no qualms getting her hands dirty to make sure that man met his very fast and hopefully very painful death before hightailing it the hell out of there. However, she didn't know just how Tenten would stand up against a genin squad and a chunin squad and the girl would certainly slow their escape down.

However, all of those thoughts aside, they weren't what ended up making her mind up for them. It was the blood on that Uchiha boy's hands and the smile on his face after shedding blood that made her blood boil far more than she could handle and she started to see his older brother instead of him. She had lost the one boy that she had ever felt anything close to love for to Itachi's genocide. The pain and anger from that memory was making her ignore all reason as all she could see was red.

"Tenten, come, it is time to get to work." Hana said to the girl with her hair in twin buns that was sitting on the branch next to her.

Land of Lightning – Several Hours Later

It was nearing daybreak when the chunin squad decided that they would call it a day and settle down for the night. One of the chunin was pretty good with Doton jutsu, and had created an encampment of sorts for them. He had flipped through a few hand seals and then had slapped his hands on the ground and a wall about a foot in thickness started to rise from the ground. It was about seven feet high once he was finished with it.

He had quickly done the same three more times and we had an enclosed space with about twenty feet from each wall to the other one across from it. One of the others was a pretty good hand at water style jutsu and had made a small oasis in the center for them to drink from and get water for cooking. It sure beats having to go and find a river.

After a quick dinner that consisted of some roasted duck that Naruto had been able to find, the three chunin convinced the genin squad that since they had to work all day and the next, that they would take the watch in shifts. None of them knew it, but it would turn out to be a very bad idea for the genin to not be on guard that night.

Naruto, Sasuke, and Neji all laid down and each of them slowed their breathing like they had been taught and within minutes they were in that place of sweet abandon known as sleep. The attack came around two hours later.

The doton user had just finished his shift and had woken up the water user. Their attackers had chosen the moment that the doton user was the most tired and the moment where the water user wasn't fully awake yet. They went down without a fight, a senbon flying into each of their necks and almost killing them instantly.

Two people appeared within their encampment seconds later and silently cast their eyes over the sleeping ninja. That was their mistake. They should have stayed at a distance and picked their targets off with their senbon, but they had decided to get in close for more accurate attacks. They had no clue that Naruto had set up a barrier seal that would alert him if it had been crossed by anything.

Within seconds, Naruto was up and unsheathing his katana. Taking a quick second to whistle out another of the whistles that they had developed over the time of their many teamwork missions, Naruto also took that second to observe his opponents, whom were already reaching for weapons, and the two chunin that were dead not ten feet from him.

The next instant saw Sasuke and Neji both jump up and fall into battle ready stances. Neji also took a second to activate his byakugan. That is the only reason that the three ninken that were sneaking up on them from behind were discovered in time. Neji gave a short whistle that told Naruto to use his echolocation technique.

"I don't know who you are, but I'll give you just a little advice. You should have stayed outside the barrier." Naruto said calmly towards the two masked ninja that had their hands fully stuffed inside their pouches now and were starting to withdraw a large number of senbon each.

Naruto pinged his chakra and smirked at the image that came back to him. Pivoting on his right foot, Naruto twisted his back sharply and allowed the mass of fangs and claws to harmlessly fly past him. Naruto then quickly rolled out of the way of the second ninken. He stopped his roll and quickly sprung into a handstand that he used to complete a backflip to avoid the third ninken.

"You know, that was smart, to send all three ninken after me, but alas it won't do you any good." Naruto said cheekily as he stood up straight and resheathed his katana.

Hana could have laughed at the boy's show of hubris and stupidity, thinking that he could take the three ninken, without his katana at that. However, instead of even allowing herself to let a single thought drift towards the egotistical blond boy, she pulled several senbon out and tossed them at that damned Uchiha that was making her blood boil so much.

At the same time that she was throwing her senbon at Sasuke, Tenten had thrown her own fistful at Neji. Tenten didn't realize exactly who it was they were fighting, but she kind of recognized the symbol on the back of the raven haired boy that had somehow inspired Hana's anger. At the exact same time, the two girls flipped through a few seals and shouted the name of their jutsu at the same time.

"Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique!" Came the twin cries of the Konoha ninja.

At first there had been around five senbon sent towards Sasuke and about three sent towards Neji, but those quickly turned into twenty for the Uchiha and nine for the Hyuga. Tenten saw the number of senbon sent towards the Uchiha and the only thought that came to her mind was overkill.

"Wind Style: Multiple Air Bullets!" Naruto shouted before expelling five air bullets from his mouth that were the size of a bowling ball each.

Neji and Sasuke had both retrieved Kunai to block the initial amount of senbon sent their way, but had been so shocked when they had multiplied the way they had. So much so, that Neji had been too slow to recover and wouldn't have had the time to activate his kaiten. So it was lucky for them that their third companion hadn't been as slow in responding to the barrage.

Naruto's wind bullets hadn't been enough to knock every single senbon out of the air, but it had been good enough to exponentially decrease the number in the barrage, and Sasuke and Neji were able to easily block the rest. Hana slowly turned her head to look in the direction that the blond haired boy had shot his jutsu from and couldn't help but feel a hint of pain at the sight she saw.

Each of her three ninken were on the ground and they weren't moving a muscle. She noticed that there was a slight singed area of fur on each of their chests and she couldn't help but worry that they had been killed by some unknown jutsu.

"Not dead, just unconscious, unlike our teammates." Naruto said after seeing the way the masked ninja's gaze lingered on the ninken.

Hana felt her chest lighten at the boy's statement and she could tell that Tenten was feeling the same way. However, now she had a real problem. The boy was just too damned good at fuinjutsu, and he wasn't her only opponent. She had to think of something and quick, or else that was how their fight would be, quick.

"Now who do we send your bodies back to once we're through with you?" Sasuke chimed in with a sadistic glee that was barely hid in his voice.

At his question, everybody looked at him with varying looks. Hana and Tenten looked at the boy with pure loathing. It was clear as day to them that the boy had a dark side that seemed to be starting to manifest in the boy. Naruto and Neji looked his way with concern written on their faces.

First off, it was an agreement between the three that they would never kill if they didn't have to, and Sasuke had shown his willingness to break that agreement earlier today. Naruto and Neji were just too peaceful and emotional to want to kill someone. Now they were seeing that Sasuke was not only willing to kill, but he was taking joy out of it.

For all the concern that they felt for their third teammate, they didn't have the time to figure it out right now. It would have to wait until later when they could take the boy aside and talk to him. If that didn't work, well then they could always beat the sense into his head.

"So, Uchiha, Hyuga, Blondie, do you honestly think that you could kill someone from your very own village?" Hana said to the boys and watched as they all began sporting faces of confusion.

"Why are Kumogakure ANBU trying to kill us and this man?" Naruto asked, suspicious of the ninja's statement since was pretty dam certain that Kumo wouldn't try and kill them.

"Kumogakure ANBU, please don't make me laugh!" The same masked ninja said in a lilting voice that seemed as if it was on the verge of laughter.

"Then who are you?" Neji asked as again got into his battle ready stance.

"Why, we are Konohagakure Shinobi." Hana said and watched with satisfaction as the three ninja gained looks of astonishment.

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I apologize for the long wait since the last chapter. I hope you all enjoyed it. Please give me your opinion in a review. Till next time.


	10. Notice

Notice

I am sorry to do this to you, all of my faithful readers whom have enjoyed my stories so much. Wow, that sounded as if I was beginning an 'I Quit' notice, didn't it. No, that isn't what this is for. Due to some recent revelations, I have gone through all of my stories and reread them. All of them have certain areas where I feel that they need work and improvement. Maybe this is just the author in me, or maybe I am actually right, who knows. All I know is that I am going to delete all of the chapters posted so far and start rewriting them. I will rewrite my stories one chapter at a time, and will switch between each of my stories once I get a chapter done, so that I can give each and every one of my faithful readers a chance to read something and not neglect certain stories. Most of the content and storyline will remain the same; however, I will be expanding upon certain characters that I realize now I neglected. Certain events that I merely mentioned will now be written about as they happen instead of mere back thought by the characters. So, if you're wondering whether it will be worth going back to reread the chapters that you've already read, your answer is yes. I hope that I don't lose any of you, but if you do decide to drop my story, I'll understand. Also, as a reminder, if you are reading one of my stories, I have several others going on that you might enjoy so go and check them out. I also have a beta for at least one of my stories, and I'll see if they wouldn't mind being the beta for the rest. If they won't the other stories will have to take a slight back burner until I can get the beta for them. Again, I express my desire for you to remain patient and to continue to read my stories. Thanks, as always, for without readers and fans, a writer is a nobody.

Ps. I'll keep this notice up for about a month so that hopefully all of you whom have followed my stories get a chance to see it and aren't confused when you suddenly notice that all of the chapters you had once read are now gone.


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